


The Quiffening

by yikesola



Series: wlw-dnp [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2018, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Established Relationship, F/F, Mild Sexual Content, interactive introverts prep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 13:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17961608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Dani’s always asking when Phoebe’s gonna cut her emo fringe. Because she knows that Phoebe’s been thinking about it for ages. But she hasn’t committed to it yet. She’s afraid.An au fic about haircut nerves and communication.





	The Quiffening

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the PFF Femslash February Fest. Betaed by the ever-thoughtful [templeofshame](http://templeofshame.tumblr.com/).

“Feebs… Phoebe,” Dani whines, “come back!” 

“My fucking elastic snapped,” Phoebe says, digging through the drawer in their nightstand looking for another but finding only useless crap. 

“Fucking hell, here—” Dani throws her hand in the air and Phoebe pulls the scrunchie from her wrist. “Now please, _please_ get on with it,” she begs. 

And Phoebe does, after she twists her long hair into a bun on the top of her head and secures it with her girlfriend’s scrunchie. She gets back into bed and settles between Dani’s legs to continue the wakeup call she’d been working on when her iconic emo hair interrupted. 

Phoebe really can’t ever focus on bedroom activities unless her hair is out of the way; she jokes that it’s like Violet Baudelaire and her inventing ribbon. She doesn’t understand how Dani does what she does with her curly mane smothering her all the while. 

But now that Phoebe’s borrowed scrunchie is doing its job, she’s able to do hers and has Dani finishing on her tongue in no time. 

Dani’s still panting when Phoebe crawls back up the bed and kisses her. “Good?” she asks, not bothering to hold back a smirk. 

“Great, you smug bastard,” she says, kissing her and catching her breath. “Can’t believe you fucking stopped halfway because of your stupid goddamn hair, Miss Priss,” she says, “I thought I was gonna pass out.” 

“Oh please,” Phoebe laughs, “I’m not _that_ good.” 

Dani yanks her bun in retaliation; Phoebe swats her hand away. “Shut up, when you gonna chop this thing off and be done with it?” 

Dani’s always asking that. Because she knows that Phoebe wants to. Phoebe’s been thinking about it for ages, been going back and forth with Dani about it for months now. But she hasn’t committed to it yet. She’s afraid. So she teases for now. “Never, jeeze Dani,” she says. “Who would subscribe to AmazingPhoebe without the emo fringe?” 

“I don’t give a shit about AmazingPhoebe,” Dani pulls her down to kiss her again. “Phoebe is amazing, and gives amazing head when she isn’t worried about her fucking hair getting in the way.” 

“Save the compliments for my Yelp Review, sweets,” she pulls them both up until they’re sitting, “we have a big day of tour meetings to get through, gotta get ready.” 

She keeps pulling her until they’re standing, until they’re walking, until they’re in the shower. 

She groans when Dani wraps an arm around her waist and trails some fingers down into the wiry ginger hair between her legs. But she begrudgingly says they don’t have time for messing around in the shower, they’re already late. 

They’re even later because Phoebe has to spend so long drying and straightening and styling her hair once they’re out of the shower. Dani used to have the tedious process every morning as well, but she gave up on taming her waves nearly two years ago. Instead, she lays on her stomach on the bed, scrolling through her phone while Phoebe overheats with her different instruments. 

Once ready, they head out of the apartment for five hours of meetings alongside Marianne to try to convince various sponsors that yes, two female YouTubers have the audience to justify a world tour, yes _yes_ , even if they have smaller stats than the last time they had to convince sponsors to fund a tour with fewer locations. They’re Dani&Phoebe — AmazingPhoebe and the entertainer formerly known as danisnotonfire — they’re a worthwhile investment.

It’s stressful. These meetings suck. The days are long and they both hate having to be the product, and yet for things like this they definitely are. 

They get through them, somehow, and the moment they’re back home Phoebe’s so stressed out that she bobby pins her fringe off her face and twists her long hair into a bun on the top of her head and exchanges her contacts for glasses and finally feels like herself again. It’s a hell of a relief after being AmazingPhoebe for so many hours. 

“There’s my girl,” Dani smiles at her when she comes out of the bathroom. “Seriously, when you gonna cut all that off?”

Phoebe shrugs. “We’ve already taken the tour photos.” 

“But that’s funny, Feebs. We’ll just tell a joke about that, how you couldn’t make up your mind before the photos but couldn’t wait ‘til after tour… the jokes write themselves! Do we even need a script at this point?” 

“We just spent all day trying to convince Rize to pay for AmazingPhoebe to schlep around the world with Danielle Howell,” she shakes her head, “AmazingPhoebe _and_ her emo fringe signed on the dotted line.”

“I was there, your hair didn’t sign a fucking thing,” Dani laughs, “my hobbit hair sure as hell didn’t.” 

Phoebe kisses her, mostly to shut her up. It works for a while. For long enough. Phoebe’s hair has caused her enough stress that day and she just doesn’t want to think about it anymore for now. 

*

Phoebe really isn’t sure when she started to resent her emo fringe. She used to love it. The emo hair was honestly so much better than a lot of the hairstyles she’d tried throughout her life, from highlighter head to gel-soaked _I’ve just realized I’m into girls_ short spikes and the awkward mid-length for a year or so once she started to grow it out again afterwards. 

Then she settled into what allowed her to have the ultimate Myspace profile before transitioning over to YouTube, and the fringe was here to stay. 

It used to be an identifier— her and Dani, those two lanky gals with the emo fringe, those nerdy YouTubers with skinny jeans and matching haircuts, who kept the deep side parts and chunky fringes and tapered edges long after they went out of fashion. 

Then Dani ditched hers, and the sky didn’t fall down. But Phoebe’s lingered. 

Dani’s decision to abandon the emo hair was a choice of inaction. It was a choice to exist naturally, authentically. A choice she made when she realised she didn’t have to spend an hour every single morning painstakingly straightening her hair. 

That she could just… not. 

That she could let her curls do what they will and spend that hour doing anything else: sleeping or yoga or settling down in between Phoebe’s legs. It’s amazing how many things Dani found she had the energy for in that hour that had been designated as hair straightening time since she was twelve fucking years old. 

She went as Lorde to a Halloween party nearly two years ago, scooped up the compliments hungrily to remember later when her negative self-image needed combatting, and decided the next morning that she just wasn’t gonna fucking bother straightening it again. 

Decision made. 

Phoebe looks back on that now and is amazed; she’s been sitting on her own hairstyle decision for ages. She’s nowhere near throwing out her flat irons. 

And it doesn’t feel fair to compare the two, but she does anyway. Phoebe _does_ feel like the idea of chopping all of your hair off is scarier than the decision to stop straightening it— one is an irretrievable action and the other is an abandoned action that can be taken up again at any time. 

Except, she thinks, maybe they aren’t all that different. 

Maybe Phoebe twisting her hair into a bun and bobby pinning the fringe back is just as much of an action as Dani straightening her curls was. Maybe by cutting her hair, she’ll be able to exist as herself without performing that action. Maybe the line between Phoebe and AmazingPhoebe will blur a comfortable amount then, and she won’t have to have such divided moments of performativity based on what her hair is doing at any given moment. 

Sure, if Phoebe hates it then she can just grow it out again. Sure she doesn’t have to cut that much off at all. But she does want to; she wants to chop the entire birds nest off! 

She’s just so afraid to actually commit. To actually act. She’s been stagnant for so long. 

She’s already detached herself from the fringe in her day-to-day, and that helps tremendously. She twists her long hair into a bun on the top of her head; she bobby pins her fringe back to reveal her bright, shining forehead. She doesn’t bother with product, or straightening it, or backcombing it. She doesn’t bother with any of it, and she feels like she can properly see, like her blinders have been removed in both a very literal and figurative sense. 

But as soon as they’re going to step outside the apartment, or as soon as they mean to film a video, she slips back into the bathroom and wastes near an hour wrangling with her hair to emerge as AmazingPhoebe. 

The same fringe masterfully straightened across her forehead, the long, long strands of midnight black hair falling as far down as her ribs. A new hole in the ozone courtesy of her hairspray. Not a splinge in sight. The look she’s been sporting for eight fucking years. 

And no wrinkles either, except the laugh lines she really can’t begrudge. Who can hate evidence of laughter? Especially when she considers that she has Dani to thank for much of them, and she loves everything Dani has ever given her. 

But the creases in her forehead that came from worry and from too many late nights hunched over and editing videos? Yeah, she’s grateful the fringe covers that up. 

“I just need to _do_ it,” she says to Dani one morning. She’s sitting crisscross on the bathroom counter with her forehead against the mirror where she had been staring at her hair so long and unblinkingly that Dani had placed a worried hand on her shoulder. 

“Then do it,” she says. 

“The scary part is that I _haven’t_ — that it’s been exactly the same for years and years and years. If I do it once, the plaster’s been ripped off.” Phoebe straightens her spine, something she very rarely does but now it lifts her forehead off the mirror and she looks at her reflection properly. “If I do it once I can change my hair every bloody day if I want to and it won’t be scary at all.”

“Makes sense.” 

“It’s the same with my fucking video background. It’s the same with my YouTube profile picture. I haven’t changed in _years_ , Dani… when did I get stuck? Why the hell did I let myself get stuck?”

Dani’s stance grows soft at that, she tilts her head and drops her shoulders and smiles just enough so her dimples are carving into her cheeks. 

“You were busy…” she says, talking to the reflection of Phoebe in the mirror. “You were taking care of me.” She shrugs, she smiles; Phoebe sighs. 

“I don’t like that,” she turns and head-butts Dani’s shoulder. “I didn’t— you weren’t… I wasn’t like _held back_ or _stifling myself_ because you have depression and I wanted to help get you on your feet.”

“I know,” Dani smiles wider. “I _know_ ,” she kisses her. “But, you chose to put a lot of your focus on me for those rough years. And between my brain and the book and the first tour, I just think you let some things that don’t matter so much fall by the wayside. Things like a hairstyle that you outgrew ages ago.” 

“It’s so stupid. It’s just a haircut. Everybody gets haircuts!”

“Every single day, yeah. Millions of people, all over the world.” 

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“But it’s okay if it does.” 

Phoebe’s exhausted. She didn’t sign up for all this introspection. “So I’m valid, babe?” 

“You’re so fucking valid.” Dani leans to knock Phoebe’s nose with her forehead. “Your anxiety over this stupid emo fringe is valid, you nutter.” 

They both laugh. Phoebe grabs some bobby pins and gets her hair off her face, twisted up in the bun she wears at home. She’s used all the energy she has to spend on it today. 

*

“What if… no one watches my videos anymore?” Phoebe asks about a week later. 

“You don’t _actually_ think that, do you?” 

Phoebe really isn’t sure. She knows it sounds crazy, she knows that her stupid fucking hair isn’t why people watch her videos. It’s just— what if? 

They’re sitting in the lounge. Dani’s propped up in the corner of the sofa and Phoebe’s laying back into her, Dani’s legs on either side of her and Dani’s arms wrapped around her middle. Like a backpack, like a lazy hug, like that awful cringy moment in _Twilight_ where Edward calls Bella “spider monkey,” and they both love sitting like this despite that image popping in their heads every single time. 

Phoebe’s talking about her hair again, because that’s all she can freaking think about lately. 

She feels repetitive, and she supposes that she is because she’ll have the loops of worry going in her head, then said aloud to Dani, then looped through her again. 

“I don’t wanna look old,” she says. As though having the hairstyle of a teenager at 31 years old is helping on that front. As though it wouldn’t be even worse to somehow still have it when she’s in her 60s. “I don’t wanna look like all those _can I speak to the manager_ women with the chunky highlights and the screaming toddlers.”

“God, please don’t,” Dani laughs. 

“And…” she clears her throat, “I don’t want people to think it means I’m coming out.” Phoebe leans further back against Dani and feels her warmth. “Like when you got your nose piercing on the ‘gay side’ or whatever…”

Dani stretches her neck to drop a kiss on Phoebe’s shoulder. 

The memory of the internet dissecting that piercing, ascribing it meaning and celebrating a brave choice that Dani hadn’t actually made and then reacting angrily when she didn’t follow up with any grand statement, is still plenty fresh in their minds. 

Their glass closet’s walls are so transparent that sometimes birds will fly right into them. But it’s still a closet. They’re still inside of it, professionally, technically. Sure, Dani had chosen to pierce her nose on a specific side. Sure, Dani’s not shying away from vocalising her same-gender attraction these days— neither of them are. 

But a piercing isn’t the same as coming out, and they’re both pretty decided that if and when (big _if_ , big _when_ ) they do come out, it’ll be intentional. 

It’ll be clear. It won’t be misinterpreted. It won’t be a piercing or a haircut. 

They both know this, so Dani doesn’t say anything about it right now. Instead, she pulls up photos that she’s saved on her phone. “I have some suggestions,” she says. “They’re a little questionable.” 

Phoebe rolls her eyes. “Whenever you say something is _questionable_ I don’t trust it, Danielle…” 

“Shut up,” she shoves Phoebe’s shoulder and laughs. “Take a look.” 

She shows Phoebe photos of women with haircuts so short that some of the sides are shaved, haircuts that aren’t _can I speak to the manager_ by any means, but maybe aren’t exactly the haircuts of a Kinsey Scale 0. 

One photo has the same deep part Phoebe’s already sporting, but the hair that’s flipped over to the other side is short enough to resemble a quiff. 

One is described in the caption as a “sideswept long taper cut” and Phoebe doesn’t _hate_ it, but she doesn’t _like_ it. Parts of it are a bit longer than she’d like, and parts of it are just a bit shorter. The sideburns are too pointed, it’s too… cutesy. It’s almost what she’d want. Almost. Not quite. 

One is captioned as a “tousled taper cut” and it’s, well, it’s gay. It’s a gay woman’s haircut. The woman in the photo is definitely gay and Phoebe’s quite convinced she can remember getting to second base with the woman’s doppelganger back in university. Phoebe can imagine a world, a timeline, where she’d have that haircut and love it, where she’d feel comfortable displaying such overt masculinity. Maybe someday, hell maybe as soon as a month or two from now. But, god, not right now. It’s just— it’s too much. Too much, too soon, and all at once.

Phoebe’s already overwhelmed. “How many of these do you have?” she asks. 

“Only a few more.” 

The next photo is of Ellen Page but the caption doesn’t acknowledge it’s her, only says it’s a “swept back bob” and something about that is hilarious to Phoebe. She doesn’t hate the haircut. It’s very much like young Leo in _Titanic_. She wonders if that was Ellen Page’s inspiration. 

The last one is captioned “soft parted style” and it surprises Phoebe, because it doesn’t look like a hairstyle at all. It just looks like short hair? Like organic and unforced short hair, falling where it will, parting where it will. It’s such a change from her hairstyle now, the straightened and parted and teased hairstyle that very much _is_ a hairstyle, nothing organic about it in the least. There’s something, well, raw about the idea? Something earnest, something hearty. 

“Lots of choices, mate,” Dani says. 

Phoebe doesn’t say anything, just presses the lock button on Dani’s phone with shaking hands. 

Dani presses her forehead into the patch of bare skin between Phoebe’s shoulder blades. “I could dig up more if you wanted. Or hell, you could walk into the hairdresser and say ‘just fuck me up, fam’ if you really want.” 

They both have a laugh at that. At the idea of Phoebe letting go of control of her image in such a flippant way. Not a fucking chance. 

“Bet it’ll help with your headaches,” Dani says, “All that weight always twisted tight on the top of your head? Imagine that just chopped right off.” She tugs at Phoebe’s bun just enough to take the burden of its weight off Phoebe’s roots. 

“Yeah?” 

“And think how much you’d save on hair dye, babe,” Dani pokes her side and Phoebe squeals and squirms to get out of her way but Dani has tightened her legs and locks her ankles, trapping her and tickling her. “One box instead of the three your Rapunzel locks currently require.” 

“I hate you” Phoebe gasps between laughs. 

“Of course you do,” Dani grins wickedly, unlocking her ankles and letting her free. 

Phoebe twists around, gets a knee on either side of Dani’s hips. She pins Dani’s arms above her head where she can’t tickle her anymore, and Dani lets her. They both lean in for a kiss. “You’re the worst person in the world.” 

“Guilty,” Dani says. She kisses her again. 

*

Dani begrudgingly puts a shirt on for a segment in what will become “A Week in the Life of Dani and Phoebe!” that Phoebe is inspired to film in the middle of the night as Dani plonks away on her laptop. She’d been lounging in a bralette and a cosy pair of boxer shorts, and while they’re more open about some things these days than they used to be, Phoebe still tosses a t-shirt at her after climbing out of bed and pulling up the camera on her phone. 

“This is so deep,” Phoebe says laughing, about the themes of the show which Dani had just listed. 

“3 deep… 6 me!” she says dramatically. 

Phoebe laughs and lowers her phone. “What the fuck does that mean?” 

“Babe, it’s a play on ‘2 deep 4 me’ obviously.”

“Yeah, no one’s gonna get that,” she climbs back into bed, “At all.” She sets Dani’s laptop aside and pulls that damn t-shirt back off of her. She presses kisses down her girlfriend’s neck, and her shoulders, and the swell of her breasts along her lace bralette. 

They’re eating breakfast the next morning, feeling rushed because they’re in the middle of rehearsal week and _Interactive Introverts_ is like… a real thing. A real show. Almost— nearly! 

Phoebe’s convinced herself that she wants to include a haircut in the “Week in the Life” video. She’s got her fringe bobby pinned back and hair twisted into a bun this morning, the same way she always does at home. But what’s different now is that she’s also worn her hair like this in a handful of gaming channel videos and even a few Instagram posts. She’s been dipping her toes in. And, just as when Dani ditched her fringe, the sky hasn’t fallen down yet. 

“Can you even donate hair that’s been dyed to hell and back?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” Dani laughs, “I looked it up. Just not bleached hair.”

“Bleach?” she waves her hand, “Never touch the stuff.” 

“You’ve got more than enough,” Dani assures her. 

Realising that she can donate her hair after deciding she wants to abandon it— abandon it after all the years of comfort and identity it gave her before she felt stifled by it— was kind of the final push Phoebe needed. After ages and ages of talking about her hair, it’s happening. It’s being cut today. 

“Want me to do the first snip?” Dani offers. “Tie it back in a ponytail, chop off the donation, guarantee that you have no choice but go to the hairdresser and have them clean up my mess?” 

Phoebe feels the blood draining from her face. She knows somehow, she’s gone even paler than normal. “I, er— I don’t know.” 

“No pressure,” she says. “Whatever you need.” She smiles.

Fuck, Phoebe loves that smile. She loves the way Dani’s eyes crease and the dimples in both cheeks and the dusting of freckles that her dusting of glitter highlight blends with and how the sun pouring through their window catches on her nose ring— god, she just… she just _beams_. Sometimes, in these quiet innocuous moments, Phoebe is railroaded with how much she loves this woman. She knows, she always knows. And sometimes she’s hit with a warm wave of it all over again. 

Phoebe stands, yanks out her bobby pins and her bun, pulls her hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck and reaches for their kitchen scissors. “Yeah,” she says, handing the scissors to Dani who looks equal parts amused and concerned at the quick actions. “Do it.” 

“Yeah?” 

“ _Yeah_ , hurry,” she laughs. “Before I change my mind.” 

“You’re not allowed to hate me in thirty seconds,” Dani says sternly as she stands. 

“Never,” she kisses her. “Never. I love you. Chop it off.” 

Dani does; she pulls the elastic a little lower so Phoebe’s hair is just above her shoulders when all is said and done. The shearing sound soaks itself into Phoebe’s bones and the lightness on her head immediately makes her feel like she’s drunk. 

Phoebe runs her fingers through it when she’s all finished, starting from the crown of her head as always but ending far, far sooner than she has in well over a decade. She nods, answering Dani’s unasked _are you okay?_

“Get your phone out,” Phoebe says later as the hairdresser is snipping away at the aftermath of Dani’s mess. “This is primo vlogging content.” 

“Are you glad you ditched the fringe, Feebs?” Dani asks, stepping in with her phone recording the transformation. 

“Yeah, I’m very glad!” her AmazingPhoebe voice is on, but she still means it earnestly. 

“What does it say about you emotionally?” 

“It says…” She knows it says too much to offer a quick quip in a vlog. Her mind has gone blank. 

“Here’s the new Phoebe,” Dani offers.

“I’m ready to show off my forehead.” 

“Watch out!” Dani laughs, continuing their banter and smiling so warmly behind the phone that Phoebe’s ready to melt. “I’ve got a wonderful forehead and the world needs to see it.” 

“Yes, exactly that.” Or something like that. Close enough. 

She’d told the hairdresser what she was looking for, even though she still wasn’t entirely sure just what that was. She’d pulled up the photos Dani had the other night and pointed out what elements she wanted and which she wanted to avoid, and the hairdresser nodded, and they wound up somewhere that— once her hands stopped shaking and her heart stopped racing— Phoebe really loved. 

Short, just barely able to be tucked behind her ears, emo fringe demolished and the fringe that remained pushed off of her forehead. A soft side part, nowhere near as extreme as the one she’d been sporting for years. 

Long enough to have body, movement, bounce. Long enough to live, long enough to let Phoebe breathe. And short enough to let her feel reborn. 

She’s gonna take a while to really get used to it; she’s going to experiment styling it with sea salt spray and not much else. She’s already looking forward to chucking her flat irons and hairspray in the bin the moment they get back home. 

Dani says she loves it, runs her fingers through it a few experimental times, swishes it for a short blip of a scene they’ll slip into “A Week in the Life” and says she can already imagine what it’ll do for Phoebe’s confidence. 

In the cab ride home, Phoebe leans over to kiss her. 

There’s so much she wants to say, so much she hasn’t quite found the words yet for. About how this wasn’t really a big deal after all, and also how it was the scariest thing she thinks she’s ever done in her life. But she’s tired. Rehearsals are long days; they’re going to bleed into even longer days on tour. So she waits for now, waits to say those words until she can make sure she lines them up in the right order. 

Dani kisses her again. Dani gets it, Phoebe realises. She doesn’t need Phoebe to say anything else just yet. She bends down to place a brief bite on Phoebe’s neck and says “Loving the easy access,” before Phoebe laughs and shoves her off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/183141311529/the-quiffening) !  
> For those curious, I made a [post](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/183141308579/for-those-that-like-a-visual-i-offer-the-hair-refs) for the different hair refs I used :)


End file.
